Technology and how it can be used to improve livestock management is the focus of the latest episode in the AgTech Revolution series.
The multi-part documentary, produced by Lightbridge Productions, explores the cutting-edge innovations being use to drive agriculture forward.
Featuring in the latest episode is Victorian seed stock producer Rob Abbott, of Mount William Charolais at Willaura, whose family have been breeding Charolais cattle for 50 years.
Mr Abbott said the Charolais breed was renowned for its exceptional temperament.
"We're starting with a docile breed of cattle, but I do believe, if you handle them incorrectly, you can create problems," he said.
"The industry knows stressed cattle obviously can be potentially dangerous to handle, and obviously it affects the meat quality.
"If they're content and they're quiet and they're happy; they'll be putting on weight, they'll be producing."
Mr Abbott started using livestock handling equipment from Te Pari after a client recommended the brand.
"A client of mine said 'I've got some Te Pari yards, you should check them out," he said.
Mr Abbott said a lot of forethought went into planning his stock yards.
"I was painstakingly wanting to get this right and it was a massive investment for me," he said.
"I think we did 17 drafts of the yards, we made sure we got it right."
The main yard is built on a concrete slab to ensure it can be used in all weather conditions.
"The starting point for the main yard design was - what is the most difficult job that you do all year with your cattle? What's the hardest thing you do now? Can you design a yard that makes that job easier? Because if you can do that, it's going to make your life easier," he said.
"So to me, the most difficult job is joining in a stud situation like this.
"We managed to create enough pens and enough size so that you can bring a big mob in. You can draft the calves off, send the cows up the race first, and then have multiple options where these cows can go out, be drafted automatically, more or less from the console with your auto gates."
Mr Abbott said the set-up he uses allowed him to maximise safety and save valuable time.
"Bad facilities make cattle work hard and things can go wrong with cattle. You get it wrong, you can run into trouble," he said.
"It allows us to do the work, which has a degree of danger to it, because it's cattle work and they're bigger animals than us, but it allows us to do it safely.
"We can process the jobs you think are going to take three hours - they take you 45 minutes, an hour. And it's been like that since the start. That blew me away originally, because I'd set a whole day aside to do something and then we'd be like, oh, we're done. It's 2pm what do we do now?
"By creating something like we've created here, it makes my life easier because it buys me time. And time is the most precious thing any of us have got. So do I want to still be in the yards at 8.30pm at night processing cattle or would I rather be reading a book to my son? The time factor and the safety factor I think would be the two greatest assets that I bought for myself. With the system that we've created, someone with very little cattle knowledge can move cattle through that system relatively safely."
Mr Abbott said ease of use was another major benefit of the system.
"Every animal that came through the farm (or) was on the farm, we put an eID tag in them, and every single time that animal comes through, it gets weighed," he said.
"Then at the end, I've got all the data on my tablet, which gets synced to the cloud. I go home with my laptop, I open it up and it's all there."
Te Pari chief executive officer Patrick Blampied said the company had experienced steady growth in the Australian market.
"Our philosophy has always been to sell direct, so we're always dealing direct with the farmer," he said.
"We get ideas just about every week from farmers. We do try and guide them a lot on what the design looks like, because we know from having done hundreds and hundreds of cattle yards what works and what doesn't. And it's not saying that their ideas are wrong, but it's often, we'll get there and we'll point out something. So we'll take their idea and then we'll say, actually, this here could flow a lot better if you just made this small tweak. And so it's really like a partnership between ourselves and the farmer to get the right answer."
Mr Blampied said it was very important to get the cattle flow right when designing yards.
"There's some basic, fundamental things that you look at when you're designing yards to make sure that the cattle are actually going to flow," he said.
"That can be from the way it's positioned on site, where it's positioned to the sun, to slope on the ground, or even the way the cattle come from the farm and what they can see when they're looking in a race or up in a pen, so they're not trying to escape all the time. A lot of detail like that goes into it. A lot of thought."
Mr Blampied said auto drafting on a crush meant 100 animals an hour or more could be easily processed.
"They'll just be coming in, they'll get weighed, drafted according to whatever criteria you might be drafting on," he said.
"And the farmer is literally just standing back up the race, holding the remote and pushing up cattle. So it does a few things. It saves stress on the animal, saves stress on the farmer and it's actually faster.
"So if you compare it to when someone's working in traditional manner, so they'll be pulling a lever, having to let the animal in when they come in, then they've got to shut the gate behind them, and then they've got to go to the front or pull another lever to let it out. And all in that time, it's a lot harder on the human. They're working all the time doing it, and it's slower. So the cattle actually spend more time in the yards. When your cattle are not eating grass or eating food, they're losing weight."
Mr Blampied said eID tags had changed the way farmers record data.
"It's taken from using a pen and paper in a notebook and writing down the tag number of a cow, to being able to do it automatically and then actually get live, real time information on the cow or sheep as they come through the machine," he said.
Mr Blampied said there were noticeable differences in cattle handled in Te Pari systems.
"(Looking at Mr Abbott's stock) the cattle were just standing there in the race and they were just patiently waiting to be processed," he said.
"There was no stamping, no snorting. They were happy and calm, and the farmer was walking around, it was just all flowing. You hear Rob talking about it just makes things so much better for him. And that's what we're here for. It just makes you proud to be part of Te Pari. It's really making a difference to the farmer."